‘Inventing terrorists’: New study reveals FBI set up terrorism-related prosecutions
Nearly 95 per cent of terrorist arrests have been the result of FBI foiling its own entrapment plots as a part of the so-called post-9/11 War on Terror, a new study revealed.
According to the report entitled ‘Inventing Terrorists: The Lawfare of Preemptive Prosecution’, the majority of arrests involved the unjust prosecution of targeted Muslim Americans.
The 175-page study by Muslim advocacy group SALAM analyzes 399 individuals in cases included on the list of the US Department of Justice from 2001 to 2010.
“According to this study’s classification, the number of preemptive prosecution cases is 289 out of 399, or 72.4 percent. The number of elements of preemptive prosecution cases is 87 out of 399, or 21.8 percent. Combining preemptive prosecution cases and elements of preemptive prosecution cases, the total number of such cases on the DOJ list is 376, or 94.2 percent,” the report concluded.
The authors define ‘preemptive prosecution’ as “a law enforcement strategy adopted after 9/11, to target and prosecute individuals or organizations whose beliefs, ideology, or religious affiliations raise security concerns for the government.”
Nearly 25 percent of cases (99 of 399) contained material support charges. Another almost 30 per cent of cases consisted of conspiracy charges. More than 17 per cent of the analyzed cases (71 of 399 cases) involved sting operations. Over 16 percent of cases (65 of 399 cases) included false statement or perjury charges, and around six percent of cases involved immigration-related charges.
According to the report, since 9/11 only 11 cases posed “potentially significant” threat to the United States.
“Only three were successful (the [Tamerlan and Dzhokhar] Tsarnaev brothers and Major Nidal Hasan), accounting for 17 deaths and several hundred injuries,” the paper says.
One of the FBI’s strategies involved “using agents provocateur to actively entrap targets in criminal plots manufactured and controlled by the government.”
“The government uses agents provocateur to target individuals who express dissident ideologies and then provides those provocateurs 25 with fake (harmless) missiles, bombs, guns, money, encouragement, friendship, and the technical and strategic planning necessary to see if the targeted individual can be manipulated into planning violent or criminal action,” the report concluded.
The government could also choose to use “minor ‘technical’ crimes,” such as errors on immigration forms, an alleged false statement to a government official, gun possession, tax or financial issues, etc., to go after someone for their “ideology.”
“What they were trying to do is to convince the American public that there is this large army of potential terrorists that they should all be very-very scared about. They are very much engaged in world-wide surveillance and this surveillance is very valuable to them. They can learn a lot about all sorts of things and in a sense control issues to their advantage,” Steven Downs, an attorney for Project SALAM, which issued the report, told RT. “And the entire legal justification for that depends on there being a war on terror. Without a war on terror they have no right to do this. So they have to keep this war on terror going, they have to keep finding people and arresting them and locking them up and scarring everybody.”
In the conclusion, authors of the report offered the US government several recommendations that the DOJ "should employ" to change the present unfair terrorism laws. A total seven recommendations call on the US government to accurately identify people who offer material support for terrorism, strengthening the “entrapment” defense in the courts; abolish “terror-enhanced sentencing” that triples or quadruples jail time in cases linked to terrorist acts; disallow secret court proceedings, and immediately notifying defendants if any evidence in their case is derived from secret surveillance.
Toxic Cycles Of Gullibility And Cynicism
Hanna Arendt describes a peculiar dynamic of mob mentality in her classic The Origins Of Totalitarianism, that resonates with the world today.
She explains that "one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire their leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."
This seemingly cyclical assumption is enslaving us today, and our inability to extract ourselves from its oppressive chains, and desert out "leaders" is enabling some of the most heinous crimes committed by humanity.
Even worse, the act of manufacturing and perpetuating lies is now being entrenched in legislation. Susanne Posel explains in "How the NDAA Allows US Government To Use Propaganda Against Americans": "The US government has unbound the legal regulations against using propaganda against foreign audiences and American citizens. The intention is to sway public opinion by using television, radio, newspapers and social media targeting the American and foreign people in controlled psy-ops."
The seamless interface between Canadian and American media, already reinforced by concentrated media ownership, now further empowers corporate media to undemocratically advance agendas that do not align with the public interest.
This, then, reinforces the necessity to question corporate media narratives, especially in matters that may impact national and international policy initiatives.
The dangers inherent in blind acceptance of corporate media narratives are illustrated by the catastrophic and on-going tragedy of the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq, for example, the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was repeated regularly, and eventually believed by many, despite evidence to the contrary.
Interestingly, a study by two non-profit journalism groups claims that Bush and his aides made 935 false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
The gullibility of the masses eventually devolved into apathetic cynicism as the truth eventually emerged and the Big Lie was exposed. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
The lies and deceptions were a pretext for an invasion that has so far massacred about one million "excess" people, and the carnage continues to this day.
Apparently, the masses are still caught up in the "gullible then cynical cycle" though, because the leaders have not been deserted, and the wars are continuing.
Leaders in this sense are not only the war-mongering politicians who rule through deception, but also their agencies, foremost being corporate media. Nevertheless, the "official narratives" are still believed, despite the shameless pervasiveness of lies and deceptions.
The vice-like grip of fictional narratives are also enabled by the omission, erasure or re-creation of historical context.
For example, the masses are more apt to believe the "western" narrative of events in Ukraine if they don't already understand the historical context coups and regime changes
as regularly practiced by the U.S empire to illegally impose its will throughout the world.
The empire has installed hideous proxy regimes throughout the world for decades, so that it can control and enslave peoples and economies, even as it hides its barbarism beneath the false banners of "freedom" and "democracy."
Beneath the fiction is a military strategy of "divide and ruin" which destroys countries globally. Currently, for example, the U.S. and its proxies are overtly destroying Iraq, Syria and Libya. Additionally, they are internally poisoning Honduras, not only through its orchestration the illegal 2009 coup, but also with its continued support for subsequent criminal dictatorships.
Given this history, why would people believe the official narrative about the Ukraine? Only the cycle of gullibility followed by cynicism can explain it. The very credible narrative that an illegal, western orchestrated coup installed a neo-nazi infiltrated regime that is dividing and ruining Ukraine is rejected despite historical context and alternate media narratives. Once the truth emerges and is widely accepted, however, the masses will once again take refuge in cynicism, and the cycle will repeats itself ad nauseum.
This toxic dynamic reinforces the importance of questioning official narratives, now more than ever, for the sake of justice and humanity. The search for truth, and the refusal to blindly accept official narratives, will help us to discover the "news behind the news" and the "money behind the lies" as first steps in paying respect and tribute to victims, at home and abroad.
Wow 935 False statements
false
[fawls]adjective, fals·er, fals·est.
